We went off on our summer holidays today as groupies for BYGO with whom our son plays. Actually it’s not as bad as it sounds as we are staying in a different town and will only see him once, briefly, for a concert on Friday night, which will be the last ever opportunity we get to see him play with BYGO.
Today though was all about getting there and having to endure some of the worst cabin pressure I’ve had for a very long time. The last twenty minutes coming in to land were pretty painful and I was glad to step off the plane even if my ears are now screwed up as a consequence.
It is a source of constant fascination to me that we always seem to have booked for the only car rental operator to have a queue waiting to be serviced. Hire car operatives are similar to flight check-in desks in that they always seem to have to re-type the whole agreement into their computer in triplicate. Then and only once that is done can the hard sell begin as they try to get you to upgrade first your car and then your insurance. Finally with all that done we were on our way.
This is one area where technology has made such a positive difference to driving abroad. We got into the car, I plugged in my iPhone, started up coPilot GPS app and punched in the address of the hotel. Within an hour and a half we were there with no fuss or stress of trying to find the right roads with a paper map.
Another positive of modern life is car air conditioning. I can remember long, hot, journeys with my parents years ago with the windows wound right down as you uncomfortably tried to remove yourself from the vinyl seats. No longer as you travel in chilly comfort. However, the downside to this is that when you throw open the door at your journeys end and discover that it is 37 degrees outside it comes as a real shock to the system – particularly haven flown in from the UK where the temperature has been down at 17.
We were relieved to discover that Google Street View was very out of date and that our hotel was complete and not like that shown below. Check out the hotel before flying came as a bit of a shock!
And so into Girona which turned out to be a pretty little town with lovely Medieval winding streets. But the best attraction has to be the painted houses and flats overlooking the river as shown in the picture above.
